Lightning Strikes: From Whence Inspiration?

By Ian Boggs from Astoria, US (Lightning on the Columbia River) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Sure, sure. You make your own inspiration and all that. You sit, you write, you create. I get that. It’s 90% of the equation.

But what about those moments that are unplanned? I know I’m not the only writer out there that’s found profundity in hot showers or strains of music (in fact, most of the WIP fell into my brain during a shower). There seem to be situations where my brain is prone to wander unseen pathways, where I make connections in stories that, on normal writing days, just don’t seem to happen. No, I don’t believe in Muses, but there is some curious power in the workings of our brains when it comes to creating stories out of nothingness.

When I was writing Rock Revival, I plugged into music. Every day. Not just my favorite bands, but bands I’d never heard of. Music that was the music of my characters. Phoenix, The Black Keys, Mumford and Sons, the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Queen, Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Neko Case. That’s just a slice. Driving around, in particular, seemed to dislodge whatever scene I was struggling with and bring about new characters and situations I hadn’t planned, so long as the music was blasting.

((Now, this is a life of a panster, I realize. There are those writers out there who have the talent (and, yeah, probably the discipline) to write outlines and stick to it. But my first drafts tend to be my outlines. Which is probably why I love the hell out of editing so much. It’s polishing.))

For Watcher of the Skies, the inspiration has been less predictable. Life has been less predictable. Instead of walking around with a lightning rod like I was able to do with Rock Revival, I’ve had to rely on the random moments. It hasn’t been music, this time, at all, that’s moved me to moments of writing epiphany Instead, it’s been during sleepless nights, moments of stillness when I can’t convince my brain to rest, when Joss and his friends come out to play. It’s almost like listening to whispers in the next room. Maybe that’s weird, but like I was saying in my post yesterday, it’s as close as I get to real magic.

So my question for you out there. Are you the lightning rod sort? Or do you wait for inspiration? Or do you just make it happen regardless of the situation? What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever gotten inspiration from? And for those of you with lives/jobs/kids/responsibilities, what do you do when it strikes at inopportune times?

Perception, Imagination, and Experience: “Stairway to Heaven” and Melodies Unheard

Image CC BY SA 2.0 by Y2kcrazyjoker4 via Flickr

I didn’t hear “Stairway to Heaven” until I was about 18. I’m not sure how that happened, exactly. I was a huge classic rock fan, and musician to boot. I found Zeppelin when I was about sixteen, and had listened extensively to their first and second albums (which I had on vinyl and had copied over to tape). I remember standing in the kitchen at our house in Massachusetts, cooking something (as usual), and my dad telling me to take a break and listen to the solo in “Good Times, Bad Times” because it was one of the greatest in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. He was right, of course. But how I never made the leap to other albums, I’ll never know. It’s sort of like loving the Rolling Stones but never hearing “Paint It, Black” or “Satisfaction.”

But “Stairway” eluded me. I was a Beatles fan, and primarily listened to them during those teen years, only dabbling occasionally into other rock albums if I found them at yard sales or scraped together enough money to buy a casette (the only Beatles albums I ever bought on CD were the Anthologies). I didn’t like radio much. The only reference I had to “Stairway to Heaven” was in the movie Wayne’s World (a movie which I still know by heart), when Wayne goes to the guitar store and starts playing the opening notes only to be pointed to the sign: “No Stairway? Denied!” (They’re actually not the opening notes, and more on that here. No wonder I was confused.)

Image via Amazon

So, in my mind, “Stairway to Heaven” had a completely different feel. It was Zeppelin, so I assumed it was pretty gritty. I thought there had to be some blistering solo, lots of drums, heavy vocals complete with panting and Robert Plant’s signature orgasmic keen. It’s like, in some alternate universe, there’s this song called “Stairway to Heaven” that I made up that, well clearly, is virtually nothing like the actual song.

I know where I was when I first heard the song. I was at a computer. I believe I was listening to an early iTunes radio station (as music got easier to access, so, too, it got harder to avoid). The song was introduced, and I remember thinking: “Okay! Here goes!” and then… wait, what?

“Stairway to Heaven” might be one of the most recognized songs in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, but having avoided it for almost twenty years makes my experience completely different. Since this was before the huge popularization of the internet, I never searched for lyrics. I didn’t know there were Lord of the Rings references. I had no idea how gentle and emotive Plant’s voice was, nor how magnificent the solo during the bridge would be (and yet restrained and longing and perfect); the rhythm section is crazy good, and the whole song peters out in echoing longing like nothing I’d ever heard before. It was an experience, to say the least.

But it wasn’t that song that was in my head. That song, like so many of our imagined realities, doesn’t actually exist. Or maybe it might someday. Maybe on another plane, some alien with a space-guitar is playing the notes of that song. I might never hear it, but it somehow exists. Even though it doesn’t.

This is all to say I’ve been thinking a great deal about perception, imagination, and experience. As writers and creators, we are a mishmash of these three facets. Just because we experience something doesn’t mean we perceive it; and just because we perceive it, it doesn’t mean it is as we imagined. When writing characters lately, I’ve been working very hard to think about these facets in their stories. Both are first person narratives, and both are telling their stories. Kate in Rock Revival is writing her story down for her daughter; Joss in Watcher of the Skies is telling his story to Maddie.

But their experiences are not mine. And even if, like Kate, they share my experiences, their perceptions aren’t the same. And their reactions, depending on how they imagined things going or not going, also differ greatly. What might be old and busted to me, may not be to them. Joss starts out the book as a godling in a man’s body, unable to tell clothing apart from skin. But he learns quickly, even if there are still some holes in his learning. He’s gifted to understand human emotion on a deep level, but that often gets him in trouble–just because you perceive something, doesn’t mean you should mention it (which he has a problem doing). And Kate, for all her tough talk, is an active alcoholic for the first third of the book. And even though it almost kills her, she still doesn’t really perceive it correctly. She’s unreliable, especially when it comes to her own faults (aren’t we all).

But back to those unheard melodies. Yes, I’m bringing it around to Keats again. There’s two stanzas in “Ode on a Grecian Urn” that talk precisely about what I mean about that unheard version of “Stairway to Heaven”:

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

The stories he’s making up in his head are better. All that panting, excitement.

That’s not just the scene on the urn, that’s Robert Plant! That’s my song. The one that doesn’t exist. It’s also every book I’ve yet to write. It’s every song and melody I’ve yet to play. And no, it’s unlikely that it’s ever going to be as good as the one imagined. But, with each successive attempt, it gets better. It gets closer. That’s what makes art and imagination so mind-blowing. We are pulling something from nothing, bringing art into the world through our eyes and hands. And nothing will ever be just like it.

And because it’s so awesome, here’s Heart covering said song recently. I can’t love this more if I tried.

Thoughts On John Lennon

Image by Poniol60 – public domain, via Wikipedia

Yesterday was the anniversary of John Lennon’s death. 32 years have passed since that fateful walk, when the world was forever robbed of a mad, genius, restless, beautiful soul. I don’t remember that day: I was in utero.

I won’t proclaim that John was a flawless visionary, because he wasn’t a perfect man. He made some staggeringly bad choices in his life, he struggled with horrible addictions, and I do believe he walked that fragile line between madness and visionary for most of his life. His youth was marred by loss and pain, but he quickly turned that around to something amazing. I think because the Beatles are so steeped in modern myth sometimes it’s hard to step back and realize just how special they were. When Lennon met McCartney, it really was a magic moment, but it was also the meeting of two young men who’d had their hearts broken early on and found, together, that they could make music like no one else on the planet.

I’ve always had an easier time with McCartney. His music, his life, it’s simpler to understand on a variety of levels. He’s always been my favorite Beatle, and while I do think the world’s most perfect song is possibly the Harrison number “Something” I think, over all, McCartney was the stronger of the songwriters. As most Beatles fans know, the Lennon/McCartney moniker was more of a catchall as the band went through the years. And by ’65, you can already hear where they’re diverging. Sure, there’s famous collaborations (the echoes in “It’s Getting Better” were from John, for instance, and the middle eight in “A Day in the Life” is all McCartney) but their work goes in very different directions once they break out of the that early pop phase.

When it comes to “getting” Lennon, I always come closest during the ’65-’66 years. It’s my favorite period for the Beatles music, anyway (not that I don’t like what came after, but these are always my go to albums) but I think in part that’s because Lennon’s also at his strongest. He’s not yet met Yoko. He’s not yet divorced from Cynthia (although their relationship is anything but peaceful). His songwriting has that tinge of strangeness to it, but hasn’t yet gone down the route of hard-drug influence or Yoko influence. You can still hear how rooted he is to the influences of his youth, from a musical standpoint, and yet he’s breaking free as a lyricist of his own right. Maybe it’s the LSD that came in ’66 that changed him completely, I don’t know. What came later was beautiful, but it was never as fragile or innocent. The difference between Rubber Soul and Revolver are pretty staggering, especially with Lennon’s contributions, yet they both hold that last bastion of youth and wonder that I think, for the most part, are lost later on.

Take “It’s Only Love” for instance, a song which Lennon stated he hated because the lyrics, in his mind, weren’t very good. It’s from the album Help! (which, as John had said, was a literal cry for help). Sure, the lyrics aren’t exactly Grammy material (quoth McCartney: “Sometimes we didn’t fight it if the lyric came out rather bland on some of those filler songs like ‘It’s Only Love’. If a lyric was really bad we’d edit it, but we weren’t that fussy about it, because it’s only a rock ‘n’ roll song. I mean, this is not literature.”), but there’s a sense of brokenness and helplessness that, combined with the pining melody, always gets me.

It’s only love and that is all
Why should I feel the way I do?
It’s only love, and that is all
But it’s so hard loving you
Yes it’s so hard loving you, loving you

No, not literature. Not in any sense of the word. He’s just describing that alienating, suffering feeling he gets from being in love and not being able to do a thing about it. Petrarch was on to that ages ago. But John had a way with progressions, taking something relatively simple and twisting it just so with an unexpected resolve or a minor chord or a melody that flips at the last second. In “It’s Only Love” it’s the second time he sings the title words in the chorus–going from the B flat to the G7 rather than to the Am–that take a potentially weak song and make it something more. Give me chills, every time. Melancholy, longing, frustration… it’s all there, in the melody straining against the chords. And it’s brilliant.

And with Rubber Soul he comes to the forefront of the entire song list with “In My Life” which, I don’t need to tell you, has become one of the most often sung graduation/wedding/mar mitzvah tunes on rotation. But that doesn’t take away from the sheer genius of it. Unlike “It’s Only Love” John packs a double punch with lyrics both haunting and heartbreaking, and the music to back it up. (Of course, like much, there’s some dispute: John claims that McCartney only worked on the harmonies and middle eight, while McCartney claims to have written all the music and not the lyrics–personally, I think John’s recollection is likely right. The progressions are a little too off to be just McCartney.) Dealing with the passing of childhood and innocence, it may be the very song that musically marks the moment of John’s transition from the young man crying “Help!” to the one steeped in mysticism and drug addiction.

I can’t overstate the Beatles’ influence in my writing and in my life. It’s quite possible I’d be an entirely different person if not for their music. And the ’65-’66 years got me through (literally) a really difficult high school experience. I couldn’t have cared less about grunge when I had the Beatles. And John’s struggles, especially the ones he wrote in music, spoke to me more during that time than any of the rest of the catalog. Which isn’t to say that “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” doesn’t make me burst into tears every time I try to sing it, but still. John was a man of many faces, many lives, even though he lived such a very short time. The older I get the more of an appreciation I have for him and for his accomplishments, but the more I see him as a man tortured by the complications brought on by our very existence. What would he have done if he’d have lived longer, finally having conquered most of his demons? We’ll never know, I’m afraid. But that he’s inspired thousands upon thousand of musicians and given life to two words (Imagine, and Peace) I think would make him, at last, content.

Rock Revival: Draft Zero

Composition. Image by Natania Barron. CC BY SA 3.0

I’m very happy at the moment. This weekend I finished the first (zero) draft of Rock Revival. Now, I know, I’ve written books before. I’ve figured out “the method” or whatever of “being a writer” and all that jazz, sure. Except, since having my surgery in 2010 I hadn’t actually finished a novel. Yeah, there was that pregnancy thing that accounted for nine months. But about three weeks after the baby girl was born, I started Rock Revival to my own surprise. I mean, I had other books to write. Speculative books. Good books, surely! Yet, for whatever reason, it’s the story that wanted to be told first (in spite of my attempts to write other things).

I’ve had to change the entire way I write. Much in the same way I can’t play guitar, I can’t just sit at a computer or a laptop. All those great writing tips for busy folk and moms and whatnot? Yeah, not much help. I can’t take my writing somewhere else; I can’t write by hand. I can dictate some, but I’m still learning how to do that. And since my surgery, I hadn’t been able to adapt that into any personal longterm projects.

So for this book, I had to retrain myself how to write. Now it’s not about numbers, it’s about endurance. And, at last, I’ve figured it out. In some ways it’s really the NaNoWriMo approach. I try to clock 200 words a day, on the short end (the “no-matter-what-is-happening-do-or-die” number) and 1,000 on regular days. And now, four months later, I have a book. No to say I was perfect every step of the way, because I wasn’t; but all in all it was pretty damned successful.

The book ended up a little more than 70K, but it’s already up to 72K after deleting and rewriting a bunch over the weekend. I tend to do a Draft Zero Re-read immediately after finishing, and it helps me tie the end to the beginning more solidly. I had a lot of epiphanies toward the end of the book and it’s bee really satisfying to go in and tidy things. There’s one scene I’m dreading writing because it’s really rough but essential to the story. Then, once I’m finished with the DZR I’ll be putting everything into Pages and doing a major edit. Then comes more writing, filling in the blanks–interviews, Wikipedia articles, Tweet exchanges. Seriously fun.

But that’s not all. I mean, I see now how important this book has been to me, personally. Not only did it help me prove something to myself that I’d been living in fear about (not being able to do this again) but it helped me remember something that I’d been neglecting a while: my love of music. For a long time my dream was to be a singer/songwriter. It was an encompassing dream that I gave up only when life got too busy and I said things like, “It’s too competitive” and “Who has time?” Not that I’ve ever stopped playing music, but it became a monthly thing rather than a daily thing.

These days, I’ve been steeped in music. I even wrote a song for the book, the first I’ve written in almost five years. And it’s even good. I’m not saying I’m changing courses to become a rock star, but I am recognizing that it’s a much bigger part of me than I’d let on for a while. I played my dad’s Gibson 339 this weekend, through an honest to goodness amplifier, and hot-damn if it didn’t feel amazing.

This has never, to my knowledge, happened before. A book has never given me something so lasting and profound in return. And I’m grateful for that.

Anyway. The baby is asleep and there’s a thousand things I need to do before picking up my son, but I wanted to take a minute and smile and pat myself on the back. That elation will only last as long as that big red edit marker lays dormant. I’ll be singing a different tune in a few weeks, perhaps.

Interview with Jesse McLaren, rock journalist:

Tell us about your relationship with Tom. How did it shape your music?
Kate Styx: There’s not much to say that hasn’t already been said. I mean, I’m pretty transparent in what I write, and you don’t have to listen to much of our catalogue to hear what I have to say on the matter. I don’t usually talk too much about it, y’know? To me, it’s a short story. We were together a while, it didn’t work out, but we’ve both moved on. He’s a dear friend, one of the best things in my life.

You’ve said that “Lost and Loving” best reflects your relationship. Why is that?
KS: (laughs) I was really mad when I wrote that. We’d just broken up for good, and he was so calm about the whole damned thing. Me? I was a mess. But that song just sort of fell in my lap one night when I was feeling really stupidly sorry for myself. I had a working demo in two hours and woke James up at 4am to get his take on it. He loved it, tweaked it a bit, and we laid down the track two weeks later. Tom really is like a river, as hackneyed as that reference might be. I could tell he was sorry we’d broken up, but he just kept moving on. I wasn’t so good at it. I don’t like to talk too many details, but I still feel that same way in the song. I probably always will.

That was your second number one hit. Do you feel strange having to revisit that raw emotion every time you play live?
KS: After a while, it just becomes a song. Sure, I bet if we broke up and didn’t play for twenty years and got together again, it’d have some meaning again. You know, like the way Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham did with “The Chain” during their reunion special. The air is charged, man. The way they look at each other. I think that’s part of going through something like this with someone and then having to continue working with them. Time is weird. Distance is important. Perspective changes. But I don’t think you ever stop loving someone entirely. You share something special with them. The first few times we played the song live we had to rewrite the background vocals for Kurt so he could sing them. I couldn’t manage it. But now I don’t really think about it.

You famously ousted Sara Plummer and brought aboard your childhood friend Kurt Bastian to replace her. There’s been a lot of speculation about that. Care to set the record straight?
KS: There’s nothing to be set straight. Listen, all my music life I’ve been collaborating with bassists. Before Sara, there was Kurt. When Sara left—and she did leave—I needed someone I could trust, musically and personally. Kurt’s been playing music all his life, and he’s solid. After all the drama of the last few years we really wanted someone strong to root us through the last album and tour. It wasn’t a hard decision to make. But he’s with us for the long haul, and we’re excited to see where we go.

He’s said some unflattering things about James Vayne in the press. How do you respond to that as his friend?
KS: [pauses to think] Listen, I’m not here to gossip about my bandmates or apologize for what they say or pick apart their motivations. They are who they are. No, we don’t always get along. Yes, sometimes we say stuff we don’t mean. But in the end, it’s the music that matters. And right now, we’re as good as we’ve been in years. Ever, really. I think our earlier dysfunction was keeping us from our potential, and now we’ve moved on and we’re making progress. We’re growing.

Tell us something about the new album.
KS: Well, we’re taking a much slower pace, for one. The first three were sort of done at the speed of light. We had crazy schedules and all these big early successes. Not to say we’re not thankful for the fans or the support, but it’s been taxing on all of us. So we wanted to really take the time with this album this time around to do something that takes us back to our roots. I’m really happy with where we’re at right now.

Have the Revivals settled down? You and your bandmate Tom have made some intriguing headlines in the past, especially Tom’s battle with drugs.
KS: Tom’s doing better. He really is. I’ve had my wild moments, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. It is rock and roll, after all.

The middle of Octember.

Image by Natania Barron. CC BY SA 2.0

These -ember months do seem to pile up rather quickly, don’t they? Last week I went away to the West Coast, spending some time with family. I don’t know what it is about me, but every single time I make a trip like that I somehow think I’m impervious to jet lag. The truth is, I’m terrible with jet lag. Eastbound is nuts. It’s almost been a week and I still haven’t acclimated, not even close. So the last few nights I’ve been up well past 2 AM, then up again at 3 AM with the little girl. So lucidity is not exactly my strong point at the moment.

Anyway, in spite of all that I’ve still managed to find the time to write. I’ve had to give up on the novella, half because the novel won’t leave me alone and half because I know I can’t give at the time that it deserves. I hate having to say no about something, to walk away. But that’s one of the realities of being a grown-up! You really have to learn how to manage your time. Or else nothing gets done. I spent the bulk of yesterday working on taxes and putting together a family budget. I much would have preferred to do something creative. But thankfully, even though it was late, I got my thousand words written.

This past weekend we visited the coast, where my in-laws live. On the ride home I had a chance to speak to my husband about the novel and some of the frustrations I’ve been going over in my head. At first, I really thought the love story was going to be central to the book. But then it sort of fizzled. It’s a whole lot less about falling in love, and a whole lot more about letting yourself fall in love. The relationships in the book don’t define Kate, she isn’t better because she’s dating or not dating. She’s not a romantic. As she says in the last scene I wrote last night, she’s gotten to the middle of her 30s without having a relationship that lasted longer than a year. And at the end of the book instead of jumping head over heels, she just meets someone that for the first time she can see herself staying with. Michael helped reiterate what I already knew: the book isn’t about romance and squishiness. It’s about music and confidence and overcoming the obstacles preventing Kate from being true to herself.

Anyway, the book is nearing the end. It’s almost at 70K and that’s without the supplementary articles, emails, conversations, and snippets that are going in later. Likely it’ll bring the size up another 10K once it’s done. I was dreaming about an interactive app. Cart, horse, etc.

Kate spends the first half trying to get over Tom, who she briefly had a thing with–but after years of pining for him. He gets born again. They both, for the mean time, beat addiction. I think I like this scene the best. They’re in Paris, about to go on stage, and for the first time they actually sit down and talk about how hard it is to move beyond, to tour without drugs and to face the people they used to be.

He sighed, looking down at our twined hands. “It’s hard. It’s… I mean, I want to be able to let go. To let God take care of it, to make me new. You understand that more than anyone, I think, even though you’re not… exactly practicing.”

That was a mild way of putting it.

“I know what you mean, at least,” I said.

“I just… do the shadows ever go away?” he asked. “Ah, shit. You’re the last person I should ask, considering what you’ve gone through.”

“We’re a pair,” I said. “But in answer to your question, I don’t think so. I don’t think we can ever rid ourselves of the shadows. We just have to learn to live with them. Eventually, maybe—hopefully—they just become part of the furniture after a while. You’re not struggling to stay in the light every damned day like some strung out vampire. You wake up one morning and, for the first time, you don’t think about it.”

“And if I fail?”

“You can always start again. But, and I can speak from experience, it’ll be harder. It’s like starting from level one all over again in Super Mario Brothers. No extra lives. No save state.” That was, perhaps, the best metaphor I could have ever given him.

He perked up a bit, his eyes getting a mischievous glint to them. Forget that it was also his “I’m horny and I’m about to jump you” look. It was still endearing. I had to battle a thousand memories and haunted strains of songs I’d written about him, pining away like some lovesick teenager. I hated how long I’d taken to let him know how I felt, and hated even more that we’d never manage to get together. Not really.

Our was not a love of the ages, that’s for sure. I was pretty much at my worst when I was with him, and likewise for him. At the time, moderation just wasn’t in our vocabularies.

We walked slowly back to the venue, his arm around me.

“There is something I noticed,” he said as we rounded the corner and the breeze picked up. “About your songwriting. I mean, I know I’m not exactly Mozart when it comes to composition, but you’re changing.”

“I am?” I asked.

“Well, for one thing, none of the songs are about me.”

I laughed. “Not directly.”

“Well, it’s the first album you’re not writing love songs to me, cleverly hidden–or hate songs. They’re about bigger things. Better things.”

I felt embarrassed to be so transparent, but grateful that he’d been able to see through my creative guise.

“You know,” I said. “Three years ago… that’s what I wanted. More than you in bed or you as a boyfriend or whatever. I just wanted you to notice.”

He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “We all notice. You’re—what’s it that James calls you?—the fulcrum. That’s it. Your the very center, the sun. We’re just the planets in gravitational pull.”

“You’re totally mixing your metaphors.”

“Which is why I don’t write much, of course. I’m just the pretty voice.”

I squeezed his waist and felt, for probably the first time since we’d broken up, that we understood each other. That whatever had passed between us as lovers had changed; we’d managed the near impossible: we’d become friends.

In the trenches between pain and progress.

Image by Natania Barron, CC BY SA 2.0

So. This is me trying out the new dictation for Mountain Lion. Why am I dictating? That’s a good question. You see, I had a lot of fun in prose. Too much fun.

It’s definitely a mixed bag. I’m really excited to be writing again, but it’s been difficult. Just when I started getting in the groove my hands gave out. Thankfully there is such a thing as dictation software. But it’s far from perfect. It isn’t so bad that writing has come to a complete stop, but it’s enough that when it comes to things like blog posts, I figure it’s probably worth it to save the fingers (and wrists, shoulders, neck, etc.). Not to mention dictation is notoriously bad with fiction, especially anything remotely speculative.

Anyway, on the writing front things are going pretty great. I can’t really complain that there’s any kind of imaginative drought like I experienced after I finished the last novel in 2010. Yes, for those of you following along at home, that’s two years ago. I have a list of excuses a mile long, including full-time work, children, pregnancy. But the fact of the matter is: it was too hard. It’s not that I wasn’t writing at all, because I have been. It’s just that fiction wasn’t happening.

Work was a big reason. I eluded to it on the last post, but the big life decision that I made last week was regarding a possible job. I had a really great opportunity to take a professional, high-paying position, but it was something that I knew would take up a large amount of my time. My last job really left no room for writing and minimal time with my family. And right now, my kids (particularly the boy) need me. The stress of the last job, along with being the single breadwinner for much of the last two years, really put a dent in my imagination. At a point, it’s just about money. And that isn’t a good enough reason to change your life. Again.

So, in a way, it’s really good to be back. I have about 60,000 words written in last few months alone, almost 8,000 in the last few days. Most has been written in what I call “the fringes”. Trust me, it’s not like time comes in battalions these days. I just write whenever the hell I can find time, which is usually snippets in the morning and late night. I have two kids. I keep house. I wash lots of diapers. Some days I don’t even get to shower, let alone to “schedule” me time. At very least I’ve committed to 200 words a day for the low threshold and, ideally, 1,000. And it’s been working really well, and goes to show that the drought earlier had nothing to do with time and, in theory anyway, brain space. Or lack thereof.

Anyway, this progress rocks. But after writing about 5,000 of them the other day, I realized something. The pain makes me afraid. It’s hard to exactly explain. The thing is, what I love doing most in the world causes me pain. Physically. No matter how you look at it, that’s depressing. In spite of my best efforts, including surgery and massage and vitamins and ergonomics, the pain is just something I have to live with. And that’s really challenging. I don’t want to admit defeat. I want to be strong, I want to be able to write until I fall asleep with my head on the keyboard. I’ve already had to give up playing guitar, and that’s felt like a huge sacrifice. Anything more seems kind of hard to swallow.

But people have it far worse than I. And I need to stop complaining and feeling sorry for myself.

Finishing Indigo & Ink was really a big deal for me, even if it ushered in a period of the doldrums. I was plagued with some of the worst pain in my life during that time. But I kept writing. Even when it prevented me from sleeping. It’s no surprise that one of the main characters is tortured! I really felt like that. But sometimes when you get in that fever pitch during the writing process, stopping feels impossible. And I fizzled for a while. I can’t let that happen again. Slow and steady… that’s my mantra.

So I guess this post is kind of meandering. I’m still wrapping my head around dictation again. But the gist of it all is that I am elated that the writing is happening, but frustrated that it’s not as fast as I like it. I will say this: never take for granted your time or your health.

And one more thing. Writing advice is well and good, but the truth is that you’ll find what works for you. When I first started writing my blog was chock-full of how-to pieces. Maybe I helped some people, I don’t know. But really I was just talking out loud. When it comes down to it, no one can tell you how to write. Everyone’s life is different. Everyone’s imagination is different. Thankfully.

The truth is there’s only one rule: write. And then write more. Lather, rinse, repeat. Even if it’s 10 words a day. Even if it just describes the view outside your window. If you want to be a writer, if you want to get published, you just have to write.

On Feminism and Women Who Rock

Woman With A Guitar – Maria Blanchard

The Spark

I was sitting in the bleacher seats in one of the music classrooms at UMass, and sort of staring top-down at the Music 101 professor. She walked around the podium and said, “Now, some of you have been asking why we’re not covering the sections of women composers, the ones listed in the book. Well, the truth is that they’re just not very good.” My breath caught in my throat. She continued with a smile, “And it’s just more important that we cover the influential composers.”

This was roughly twelve years ago, my freshman year. At the time, I was still hellbent on becoming a singer-songwriter. Hearing the professor–a woman!–say what she did made me feel sick to my stomach. I felt embarrassed. For her, for the class. She might as well have just said: “What women have accomplished in music isn’t worth our time. They’ve made no impact on the world, so we ignore them.” (For the record, there are over 800 listed on Wikipedia alone.) Was that going to happen to me? Was my music just… not important enough to be anything other than a footnote?

To say that women are missing from what most people know as Classical music is an understatement. While there are some standouts, including Felix Mendelssohn’s own sister Fanny, by and large Western Classical music as taught (like most of the Humanities) is dominated by men. And why are men “better”? The major contributing factor: education. Not to mention support. And the non-existence of birth control for women. And their horrifically short lifespans. But that’s sort of not the point. The point is that regardless of the calibur of their work when compared to their male counterparts, women’s accomplishments matter — in fact, they matter so much precisely because they were done against the odds.

Moving Forward

A few years later, when I was in graduate school, I had somewhat of an opposite issue. Most people assumed I was a feminist leaning literary critic because, I guess, I am a woman. Also, I talk a great deal. But I didn’t identify as a feminist critic. As a medievalist, I was fond of the school of New Historicism, which seeks to try its best and read literature in the context of its era, and includes a great deal of historical research. I always replied to the question of feminist criticism in the negative. But in spite of my initial reply, by the end of my degree I found myself writing my thesis on a very feminist subject, the role of Guinevere in William Morris’s poem “The Defence of Guenevere” as well as looking at her in Marie de France’s lai, “Lanval.” Ultimately, I was drawn to one of the most scandalous and often discussed women in English literary history, throwing around terms like “agency” and “proto-feminism” a great deal. So much for that!

Now, I’m an author. And while my first novel featured a male protagonist, nothing since then has. I write women because I am one, because I feel like our stories still need to be told. Because we need feminism now. As a recent interview with Caitlin Moran, hilarious and brilliant author of How To Be A Woman points out, women of my generation and older are often afraid of being labeled feminists. It’s a bad word. It means you’re a bitch. Or a lesbian. Or a hippy. Or you hate men. Or you aren’t feminine. Or whatever. Right?

Moran puts it succinctly:

What part of liberation for women is not for you? Is it the freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man that you marry? The campaign for equal pay? Vogue by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that stuff just get on your nerves?

It’s easy to forget how far we’ve come in so short a time. Marriage was never about love or about choice: It was about wealth. Dowries. Status. Political alliances. Until the early 20th century, it was practically unheard of that a woman would have a say in her own marriage, let alone have a career. Pioneers like Mary Shelley (and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft), Ada Lovelace, the Bronte sisters, and Jane Austen, had to work against incredible odds to do what they loved. That they produced anything of meaning is nothing short of astonishing.

Women Who Rock

Doing research for Rock Revival I’ve been delving into the history of rock music as best I can. Sure, there are bands with women in them. In the indie scene it’s more common these days, but mainstream popular bands tend to fall into two categories: entirely composed of women and often done so with marketing in mind (The Go-Gos, The Runaways, The Bangles, etc.); or fronted by a woman (The Pretenders, Blondie, Hole, Evanescence). The Revivals, my fictional band, are comprised of men and women (initially two women and three men, a la Fleetwood Mac, Talking Heads, or Belle & Sebastian) which is the hardest category to find. No matter how you slice it, rock music is still very much a boys’ game, and apparently boys and girls playing together isn’t a terribly marketable concept.

Quoth Moran, rather apropos to the subject of women rocking and marketing:

“In the early ’90s, it was grunge, everybody was fully clothed. Alanis Morissette was one of the biggest artists in the world, never wore make up, wearing Doc Marten boots, and then the Spice Girls turn up, and suddenly it all looks a bit burlesque, suddenly they’re the biggest band in the world. … And as you go all the way through the ’90s, the clothes just fall off the women until you get to the year 2000, and Britney Spears is just wearing a snake.”

It got me thinking about equal footing in the music industry and why there are so few visible female rock musicians. And I think it has a lot to do with lack of empowerment. Take my experience. In spite of the fact I was born 20 years after the 60s, I was something of an anomaly as a female musician. It’s not exactly the norm to hear girls chat about electric guitars or dream about Fender Princeton Chorus amps while leafing through Musician’s Friend.

I remember “talking the talk” a few times around male musicians and sound guys (particularly older ones), and they often expressed a sort of surprise and amusement. Was I posing? Was I serious? Was I any good? “Yeah, how long have you been playing?” “What kind of guitar do you play?” Just like in geek circles, when you’re a female musician you’re often held up to more scrutiny, as if you’re some sort of impostor. And in many cases I think that scrutiny leads to self-consciousness and safe decisions, like starting your own band rather than joining one, or selecting to work with other women. Or becoming a folk singer instead of a rock star. (There are, thankfully, exceptions.)

And how about instrumental choice? I wonder, why did I never branch out from rhythm guitar to something else? Why didn’t I try lead? I think the sad answer to that is I didn’t think I had it in me, as a woman, as a musician. Because, by and large, girls don’t play lead guitar. I’m not flashy, I’m not a “performer” in that sense. Who was I to get up there and shred? (And it hasn’t gone away! My fictional band is real to my experience. Kate and Sara, like me, were encouraged with music but never pushed to be lead guitarists, or gutsy lead singers. Why don’t either of them play lead? I guess I feel like the odds of that happening, even now, are slim to none, in a band that finds a big audience.)

Carry On

I have a daughter. She’s barely three months old — but even before she was born I was worrying about what challenges she’s going to face. Now I find myself thinking about this stuff a whole lot more than I did when my son was born. Because no matter how hard I try, she’ll have a different experience than he will. Pieces like Mur Lafferty’s “Dear Daughter” really get to the heart of what I’ve been contemplating. If women today are so afraid to use the F-word, so worried about what other people might think when it comes to their own empowerment and pride, what does that mean for my daughter’s generation? If we, as mothers and fathers and friends can’t give them the courage to get out there and shred, if our communities can’t get behind them, then all the work that women like my grandmother (who was a first-wave feminist) — and other women in rock, and those who rock — have done won’t mean a thing. It’s a scary prospect.

I don’t want to make this terribly political, but I can’t go without saying that there are people here, in my country and around the world, who don’t believe women really can do these things. That it’s just not in us. Some of their motivations are religious, others experiential, some plain misogynistic. But these are big decision-makers and policy-pushers, CEOs and ad executives, people controlling the stream of what we hear and see. There are people who still see women as baby-makers and child-rearers, and creatures who really should just stay home (because that’s the best for everyone) and surely aren’t capable of raising children by themselves, let alone doing face-melting solos in front of thousands of people.

You know what? We are bigger than they are. If we decide to work at home to be with our kids, that’s our choice. If we decide to put our kids in daycare and go to work and kick ass and take names that way, that’s also our choice. That is what feminism is about. Not about being a bitch, or a liberal, or a “femi-Nazi”. It’s breaking free from the outdated societal constraints we’ve struggled under for so long. It’s about having a choice.

I want my daughter to feel the power of music. If she decides to, I want her to plug in her Les Paul, hear the sizzle of the cord coming to life, and feel every note course through her. I want her to feel the hot lights on her face, to smell the funk of backstage, to see the faces of a crowd when they make that connection. If she wants to strut, I want her to strut. If she wants to scream a primal scream and dazzle the audience with her talent, I want her to revel in every moment. I want her to be a proud, to do what I never did. And I want the world to rise up and celebrate every moment with her. Maybe that’s a lot to ask. But I think it can happen.

The pulse of rock ‘n’ roll beats in all of us, and it’s about power and strength and love and heartbreak and sex and experiences and empowerment. It’s not just a boys’ game. If anything we should be giving girls Telecasters when they’re ten and encouraging them to rock, to tell their stories, and to change the world.

We are not the labels we’ve been given. We are not wallflowers. We deserve to be heard. We are women who rock.

You built it up brick by brick…

Photo: Natania Barron

Well, Rock Revival is officially at the 1/3 mark. 25K isn’t a novel, true, but it’s more than I’ve written in quite some time. In spite of crazy busy baby stuff, job hunting, and a visit to the beach with the husband’s entire clan, I’ve been crawling along. Some days have been painfully busy and writing hasn’t been an option, but I usually make up for it. If I could actually type for long periods on the laptop, it might be a way to bolster the word count; but alas, that’s likely never going to be unless Apple actually starts designing products with ergonomics in mind rather than the “ooh, shiny!’ factor. And we know that’s not likely to happen any time soon.

I’ve done a bit of reading over the last few weeks (two whole novels!), and while I’ve been tempted to leave this world of non-speculative fiction, I’ve stayed the course. My goal is to finish the book in the next five weeks. It’s possible if I log about 1500 words a day on average, roughly NaNoWriMo pace. See, there’s a novella I’d like to write that’s due by the end of September, and I prefer not to work on two things at the same time if I can help it. However, if the book isn’t done by then I’m just going to have to forego the novella. But that’s okay. I just know that I’m a much stronger writer if I can focus, which these days is hard enough to come by without adding more complexities in the writing department!

One of my current goals with Rock Revival is upping the musical ante. I realized that I’ve been thinking and talking a great deal about music lately, but Kate, the protagonist, hasn’t. So she goes on a bit of a musical journey in the most recent pages, talking about the Cure as a huge influence, as well as the fictitious Marla North, Kate’s idol (who she meets later on in the book). I plowed through some big drama with Kate’s mother dying, and I know I’m going to have to revise that section a great deal. There’s just so much to say and show that it’s a bit of a challenge to get it right on the first go-round. But that’s what drafts are for, right?

Next up: finishing the album, resolving relationships, and getting ready to go on tour.

Drafty Tidbit:

And Mom? I guess I miss her. Burying her was difficult. But I’m constantly caught between grief and relief when it comes to her death. She died drunk, she lived drunk. Living with her was a nightmare, and even if my shitty attitude as a kid drove her away she still made her own choices. Just like I made my own… But it’s a lie to claim that funerals give closure. If anything, they just signal the hauntings to come, the moments you forget they’re dead in the first place. That’s what hardest about death. That’s what’s hardest about losing her without ever really coming to peace with her. It’s like a sustain chord that never resolves.

Today’s Track: Myth, by Keane, from Strangeland. Tom Chaplin’s voice during the bridge continues to give me goosebumps every time I hear it. And the lyrics are spot on for the last few chapters of this book.

I can’t stay here to hold your hand, I’ve been away for so long

By Kaldari (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

That’s a Neko Case lyric, from “The Next Time You Say Forever” from Middle Cyclone. It sums up things nicely for where the book is going right now.

But first things first. I had a great time at ConTemporal, the convention in my back yard. It was splendid to see so many friendly faces and see folks I hadn’t seen in a long time. I really enjoyed the panels I was on, particularly the one on Neo-Victoriana and the one on Weird Westerns. I’m always happy as a clam to talk about these sorts of things, even if I did compare my writing process to Pooh Bear’s “Think, think, think” and talk probably too much about shiny things and Young Guns. (Note to Karen: I seem to always bring you up as the Aldersgate inspiration… which really was the springboard for all of this. <3)

Unfortunately, the baby girl* didn’t cooperate too well at night, so I was a bit of a zombie by the time Sunday rolled around. But it’s getting better. Four of the last seven nights she’s slept six hours or thereabouts. It was just convention timing that was bad.

Anyway, because I’ve regained my zeal in the last four weeks, I still had to do some writing last night. Some wine helped (though neither was remarkable enough to write home about) and I sat down to clock in just under 2K for the night. Sincerely happy with that.

In other news, I’m about to finally get that digital piano I talked about before, because heaven help me I’m going to explode if I can’t get some music playing in. I try not to cry thinking about not being able to play guitar (wandering into Guitar Center and having to walk away from the guitars was really, really hard) but it’s life. I can still write. I can still play piano. (Our bodies are fragile. People, take care of them.) I’m playing around with the idea of actually writing and recording some of the songs from the book, because that’s how I work. I feel like I can’t get it right if I can’t sing it/play it, in this aspect. (And cool thing about the keyboards these days, you can pretty much be a one person band if you need to be. We’ll see if I can convince the husband to lay down some guitar tracks…)

The book is turning into a bit of a multimedia project, and I’ve set up a Pinterest board for visual inspiration as well as a Spotify playlist (though what’s frustrating is that lots of things, like Zeppelin and the Beatles and whatnot, aren’t available). It’s not just songs I like to listen to, or musicians that I dig, but also folks who would have influenced the band members. Okay, so we basically share the same musical tastes but… I swear, I’ll put Kurt’s playlist together (yes, I’m thinking of creating playlists for individual characters) and that’ll be totally weird and wonky. Exciting discoveries (since I’ve been primarily listening to Classical music for the last half decade) include Fran Healy of Travis’s solo album (which features Neko Case and Paul McCartney). I listened to Travis pretty much on repeat through college, and the fact that Fran’s worked with some of my other favorites of all time (including an upcoming project with Keane) I’m borderline giddy.

More very rough first drafty goodness. Backstory bleeding into present story, and stuff about love and liquor.

Nashville was our attempt at saving ourselves. At saving the band. At saving the music. With Sara out of the picture (but not out of mind for neither James nor I) James and I had a lot more time to really figure out what kind of sound we wanted, and what we wanted to say. Both of us were single, and neither of us were over that last hearbreak. So Lester Hotel was, no surprise, a total catharsis.

And really, when we stepped away from the whole thing we realized that it was far less of a band album and more of an album where our band happened to play the songs we wrote. Dusty and James insisted that Kurt stay out of the process, aside from just playing what we told him, and Tom and Paul sort of danced around the periphery.

And yeah, there’s another story there, too. Because halfway through Lester Hotel, a few weeks after we were mixing down the first demo of “16^th Street Lights”, I realized something really strange. That I had feelings for James.

We’d worked together so long, and he’d always been Sara’s. And honestly, I thought they were going to get married (though God knows Sara’s parents didn’t take well to James to begin with; part of me would have loved seeing what they’d do with a half-Indian grandchild). I’d constructed a pretty impressive wall around my perception of James, and it’d been up so long—and, I should mention, expertly fortified with liquor and delusions—that when it came down, I almost crumbled, too.

*this post took approximately 5 hours to write. On and off… yeah. All hands on deck!

Natania Barron

Musings. Melodies. Mischief.

Category Archives: music